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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

New Year's Eve at Naritasan Temple

A wise man (though in reality he's more of a wise guy) once said that information is like fresh fish. So with that in mind, I'm going to serve you now stuff that is a week old. Well, better late than never.(you'll get your fresh fish in the next post, I promise!)

Naritasan temple is a very special temple to me. Sentimental reasons, you might say. And though I'm a fan of Buddhist temples in general, Naritasan will always have a very special place in my heart. It was a place where, once upon a time, one chapter of my life came to an abrupt end, and a new one began.

So when a chance to end the old year and welcome the new one at Naritasan presented itself I couldn't pass it up. I just couldn't. For old times sakes. To remember the good. And to forget the bad and the ugly.
And that's how on December 31st (can't believe it was just last week), I found myself, armed with my camera, walking very purposely (with a brief stop for some very potent Thai food) along the winding streets of Narita city.

This being the last day of the year, the streets were pretty crowded. It seemed the entire town (and parts of the neighboring prefectures) had exactly the same idea. I had not seen that many foreigners in 5 years in Tochigi as during that one evening in Narita. Amazing. Or not.

The temple, its formal name is Naritasan Kongo-o-in Shinshoji (it's the lead temple of the Chisan sect of Shingon Buddhism) was exactly as I remembered it. But this time it was all dressed up for New Year's Day festivities.

The lower courtyard was filled with stands selling everything from daruma dolls to sheep cell phone straps (yep, you got it, 2015 is the year of the sheep).

Because it was dark, the Nio figures were impossible to photograph. So here's my excuse to visit the temple yet again, this time during daytime. Ha! Crafty me!

I'm not going to bore you with the wiki details, if you're interested you can google them.
I'm just going to show you what it looked like.

The cops were busy calibrating the spotlights in preparation for the midnight service and actually helped me capture this reflection of the three-storied pagoda.

And this is how it looked like in real life:

The plan was to go back to the hotel, take a rest, and then return for the midnight bell ringing. But as with all best laid plans, it didn't turn out that way. So here, yet another excuse for me to return to Naritasan. Awesome!

And the other side:

It's a quite odd feeling to walk around the temple grounds at night when the place is empty. But it felt even odder when despite the darkness, the temple was full of life.

And everything was brightly lit.

Of course I forgot my goshuin book, stupid me. To be at Naritasan on December 31st and not get a red temple stamp? Sacrilegious! No choice but to buy a brand new goshuin book. And guess what? They had it in pink and it matched my jacket exactly.